Coronavirus

[azaz]

Christian Wood, NBA player, tests positive with no symptoms a week after playing Rudy Gobert’s team. Incredibly disheartening seeing all these busy restaurants and bars.

also on NYC: COVID-19: New York Will Be The Next Italy, But Doesn’t Have to Be

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

tests positive with no symptoms a week after playing Rudy Gobert’s team.

It's worth noting he (Wood) reported flu-like symptoms the morning of the Pistons' game against the 76ers on Wednesday, March 11th. They played the Jazz on March 7th. So the times of display of symptoms by Gobert and Wood don't quite line up with what you would expect. We'll probably get the full story on exactly what was the sequence of infection at some point in the future. May have to test more players to see who was Patient Zero in the NBA. It may not have been Gobert.

 

[azaz]

Maybe, just maybe, "one of the best European health systems" ain't so good after all.

It's funny, lots of people here and the liberal side of the media are bashing Trump for every decision he makes (granted the far right side praises everything he does). If he does nothing, his inactivity is going to kill people, if he does something, like stop travel from highly infected European countries (the smart ones with great healthcare systems), he is causing chaos and confusion. The people could care less about those affected by this virus, they just want the political result they have desperately worked for the last 3 years.

Regardless, so far, the hero European countries have a far higher rate if infections and deaths. Maybe American will turn out far worse (according to the haters, we're all dead because Trump is an idiot and screwed this all up), who knows. Like you said, we'll know in a few weeks or month.

Put me on the side of Elon Musk, in 3 or 4 weeks when people aren't dying in droves and those infected recover with little fanfare, Americans will get back to their lives and realize they were bamboozled again by the media.

If I'm wrong, I'll gladly post it. Just like you said.

the absolute temerity of some people is amazing. all the facts are out there, including Trump repeatedly downplaying the virus (he called it a hoax! Said we’d be at 0 infected soon!) and then keeping testing capacity low so the numbers don’t increase too much.

for 3 years we’ve been warning about this president’s dangerous mix of ignorance, lying, and incompetence and now that it’s all on display in his mishandling of public health to keep the stock markets pumped for his re-election people have the audacity to lecture the rest of us? Save it.

 

[eevee-fan]

Meanwhile, where America's Day Begins... Zero case so far (fingers crossed) thanks to smart leadership from a former nurse, now governor. And this is at a place that hosts tens of thousands of tourists from Asia each month.

Adelup: Six Guam COVID-19 tests are negative

 

[shootformoon]

We don't cure stupid. We just need to design methods to convince the stupid to follow the right way.

We used to have a saying where I worked in residency . . . "Sorry, I don't have a cure for stupid."

 

[Doggydogworld]

...we're already at possibly 20000 cases nationwide, and if that's the case we'll be over 250k in 2 weeks!

That's a doubling rate of less than 4 days. I've not seen any epidemiologist claim that. Trevor Bedford uses ~6 days. Social distance measures would lengthen that.

That's probably too low a probability. Though since the guests weren't showing symptoms at the time (and had not been ill previously I guess) it was presumably fairly low risk for the President.

I meant zero chance the announced result would be positive. I know Trump said he didn't know the result when he first said he'd been tested, but sometimes I don't believe every single word he utters.

May have to test more players to see who was Patient Zero in the NBA. It may not have been Gobert.

Transmission between NBA players and non-dunking humans is also possible. These guys travel constantly and interact with tons of fans and team/hotel/restaurant staff, so it's possible Wood got it elsewhere.

 

[KSilver2000]

Christian Wood, NBA player, tests positive with no symptoms a week after playing Rudy Gobert’s team. Incredibly disheartening seeing all these busy restaurants and bars.

also on NYC: COVID-19: New York Will Be The Next Italy, But Doesn’t Have to Be

The rate for New York is astounding. They must be licking each other over there. They’ve overtaken CA so quick and might even beat WA soon.

 

[Causalien]

Thinking of the future.

This will probably have the effect of creating a baby boomer generation as it forces people in the whole wold to stay home at the same time for a long period of time yet condoms are not sold out and nobody I see at the grocery store or pharmacy are buying condoms.

The result is, let me coin it, "Viral babies"

We can expect the next 7 year to be focused on baby products... I need to brush up on which companies thrived at each period of the baby boomer wave.

 

[eevee-fan]

The rate for New York is astounding. They must be licking each other over there. They’ve overtaken CA so quick and might even beat WA soon.

Pizza Rat helping it spread faster?

 

[dhanson865]

from reddit: r/dataisbeautiful/comments/fimdrn/oc_updated_chart_comparing_the_number_of/ and is about 12 hours old as of the time I posted.

 

[gene]

In my area schools are closed yet I have seen kids out and around town hanging out. WTF are their parents thinking? My 14 year old daughter is home. In the house, not leaving.

If you smarter people here can tweet and Facebook this article please:
Pediatrician: No Coronavirus Break Playdates. Here's Why.

 

[Earlian]

In my area schools are closed yet I have seen kids out and around town hanging out. WTF are their parents thinking? My 14 year old daughter is home. In the house, not leaving.

If you smarter people here can tweet and Facebook this article please:
Pediatrician: No Coronavirus Break Playdates. Here's Why.

You are doing it right. It is just a matter of days. We took our kids out of school and 3 days later they closed it. Being the first to act responsible, is always good thing.

Not only with Cars. ;-)

 

[Singer3000]

On Saturday, UK health officials pledged to publish their forecast model so it can be independently analysed by other experts in the field. I am not aware of any other health authority yet doing so?

In any case, we will get to see whether Elon Musk is the only person in the world not “dumb” enough to have considered the modelling impact of incubation periods, the non-infinite size of the human race and the possibility that some people have contracted and recovered from the virus without being tested.

Meanwhile, as I forecast some weeks ago now, we are seeing the effective suspension of international travel on a global scale. I remember one esteemed poster (who I now have on block for troll like behaviour, so don’t bother replying) mocking me for my concern, because it didn’t matter if a few businessmen failed to make their meeting and who cares if a few oil companies and airlines suffered stress. When Q1 GDP stats are released, I suspect that view will be looking rather complacent. Or to coin a phrase, “dumb”.

It should by now be clear to all that we are facing a profound economic crisis, possibly the worst in living memory because there is not an obvious policy solution to relieve it. TARP and QE from 2008 onwards were seen as unprecedented actions at the time but they were in all honesty quite familiar battle tactics to economists. I still don’t see what the elegant fiscal or monetary tool is to counter this recession, until the underlying cause has itself been eliminated.

As for how this relates to the markets, neither bull or bear markets move in straight lines. I strongly suspect the exuberance shown on Friday will be corrected before the week is out, when sober heads consider these facts. Funds buying stocks with newly cheap leverage (which is what we saw on Friday) feels to me like a one trick pony in propping up the market, because it does little to alter the fundamentals of the economy.

Sure, people with floating mortgages (or those about to refinance) now have breathing room before default. But the rate cut does nothing for businesses who for example rely on receivables financing with a diminishing receivables book, it doesn’t encourage services consumers to change their risk averse behaviour, it doesn’t give an income to the swathes of the labour force reliant upon self employment, contract work or zero hours contracts etc...

Where does this leave Tesla? I guess that depends on whether you believe they are entirely supply constrained and to what degree. I expect Q1 Model 3 sales to be quite good due to the time lag in consumer behaviour. But that won’t matter for toffee to the stock price if the 2020 outlook looks poor. I’m personally sat here wishing Tesla had raised $5bn rather than c.$2bn but given Musk’s recent tweets and behaviour, it looks with hindsight a miracle we even got that.

Am still as invested as I ever was in my pension account, there are possible positive black swans even in these times (battery breakthrough, FSD). But I am still not attracted by these prices as a home for more short term money.

 

[NicoV]

One thing i noticed locally is that retailers and restaurants are starting to roll out new policies to curb the spread and reassure customers. Seems like there has been a pretty big shift in the last few days in the USA. Sounds like a we are getting to the point of "acceptance" versus the weeks and months of denial.

Walmart for example: Walmart reduces hours at US stores to keep up with surge of shoppers

which will only cause lot’s of people to be together in the same building. Not what you need to limit an epidemic.

 

[Fact Checking]

I don't want to alarm people, but any TMC members living in New York City or other large metro areas should consider the following.

Andy Slavitt is a top health official from the Obama administration:

COVID-19: New York Will Be The Next Italy, But Doesn’t Have to Be

Andy Slavitt on Twitter

"What @chrislhayes reports is true & is a major concern unless we reverse our habits ASAP. The thread below provides details."

"COVID-19 Prep Update- March 14:"

"Last night I was on with state & local officials around the US well into the night. By March 23 many of our largest cities & hospitals are on course to be overrun with cases."

"I am going to prepare a memo for them. I will share highlights here.1/"

"They are highly dependent on the public response so I will start there. We have no immunity to COVID-19, people who get it don’t know for a while, and for each person that gets it, they infect 2+ people. 2/"

"This is what it looks like in Italian hospitals. Every report describes this as a tsunami. And if it happens like a tsunami, in major cities we will have 10s of thousands more cases than we have beds & we will have 1 ventilator for every 8 people who need one."​

Here's his thread from 2 days ago:

Andy Slavitt on Twitter

"Currently experts expect over 1 million deaths in the U.S. since the virus was not contained & we cannot even test for it."

"This will be recorded as a major preventable public health disaster. I will try to relate what I learned from a long day of calls about what is happening."

...

"Still today, people in the CDC are well aware of the fatality estimates at the top of this thread. Yet they are muzzled. They are aware of the shortages. Yet they are muzzled."

"Worse, they are being asked to call the press and tell them they are not being muzzled."
​

(See much more in the threads.)

Note that as a former Obama administration pandemic response team member Andy Slavitt is probably politically opinionated, but his analysis is very level headed and he still has many contacts inside the current administration.

He's obviously highly qualified. This is him sitting at the table, on the left:

If you are above 60 or have pre-existing conditions, and have the means to temporarily relocate from a big metro city to an area with a high hospital beds ratio, I'd suggest considering it seriously.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

That's a doubling rate of less than 4 days. I've not seen any epidemiologist claim that. Trevor Bedford uses ~6 days. Social distance measures would lengthen that.

For the 20k, I was talking about the actual cases (not the known cases, which currently stand at around 3000). Trevor's estimate as of yesterday was between 10k and 40k actual cases, but he also said he could be off by a factor of two either direction beyond that (so 5k to 80k). That's a wide range, but accounts for uncertainty about the original transmission multiplier for the first few introductions in Seattle and New York and Santa Clara.

For the growth rate, it's true that the doubling rate sometimes used is 6 days (12.5% per day). But if you look at worldwide case growth rates it is growing at 20% per day. Not sure the reason for that discrepancy; it could be higher due to improving detection or whatever...

Anyway, I would say it seems nearly certain we're at 10k cases nationwide, if we've actually found 3k of them.

So those remaining uncontrolled 7k cases, or whatever the number, will continue to grow exponentially at 20% per day. Which would be 89k in two weeks. Hopefully some of the distancing and stuff and detecting the cases and tracing contact chains allows some of the steam to be taken out of that growth. I certainly think 250k plus at 3 weeks would be a high end result. I'd expect closer to 100k at 3 weeks out, as I said. 7k*1.125^21 = 83k. (low) 7k*1.2^21 = 322k (high)

I meant zero chance the announced result would be positive. I know Trump said he didn't know the result when he first said he'd been tested, but sometimes I don't believe every single word he utters.

Ah, I can follow that, agreed!

Transmission between NBA players and non-dunking humans is also possible. These guys travel constantly and interact with tons of fans and team/hotel/restaurant staff, so it's possible Wood got it elsewhere.

Yes, but I guess the only way we'd know that is to have their viruses sequenced and do a phylogenetic analysis. Hopefully they'll do this, but maybe not. That GISAID data tends to be anonymized, so we'd have to have their particular sequence in the GISAID database associated with their particular reported case.

 

[SMAlset]

Listening to KTVU tv news tonight, Saturday (Jan Jose, Ca) and they were reporting in Santa Clara County 79 confirmed (1 recovering); 2 deaths. Here’s their story including other Northern Calif counties. they break out statistic by transmission as well.

Coronavirus: County-by-county breakdown of confirmed cases in the Bay Area

Of all the 247 confirmed positive cases in California (not including Grand Princess passengers that recently docked in Oakland):
Age 0 – 17: 4 cases
Age 18 – 64: 143 cases
Age 65+: 98 cases
Unknown: 2 cases

Two weeks ago by the end of the week many of the Silicon Valley corporate campuses announced WFH (work from home) for the vast majority of their employees. My husband started his this past Monday, so first week already. Other reduced activities were implemented throughout universities and school campuses, etc. We still have the largest confirmed count in our area. Hopefully our proactive actions have helped reduce numbers in the long run.

 

[Causalien]

Chicago o Hare is a mess. Everyone packed tightly together for 6+ hours and returning from European countries with high infection rate.

2 week countdown to a huge outbreak. This is one scenario where a habit of wearing masks will reduce transmission. But since there are no masks to be found in the west, it was an inevitable situation.

 

[SMAlset]

I will say that masks are not being worn from what we’ve seen. I’ve had a supply of surgical face masks I use for dusting etc around the house (allergies) and some N95s from when we had the horrible wildfire smoke last year in the Bay Area. While I’ve heard in the news people don’t need them (and should leave available for medical staff) I can’t help but think they help contain the sneezes and coughs of anyone in the early pre-symptom stages from spreading far and reaching more people. I’m still surprised these aren’t being recommended to wear out but if supplies are so low what do you tell people to do. Do think our federal government should have had stock piles of certain supplies stored for rapid distribution to areas in need in anticipation of a pandemic many scientist/doctors said would eventually happen.... sort of like how there are stored oil reserves kept.

 

[Fact Checking]

...

Chicago o Hare is a mess. Everyone packed tightly together for 6+ hours and returning from European countries with high infection rate.

2 week countdown to a huge outbreak. This is one scenario where a habit of wearing masks will reduce transmission. But since there are no masks to be found in the west, it was an inevitable situation.

The number of infected in the U.S. is estimated to be above 100,000 already, which is at least 1 but possibly 3 orders magnitude higher than any new infections arriving via borders.

It's a classic "the horse already left the barn" situation, and the exponential curve of the early outbreak is pretty much inescapable for the next 10 days - and that's while there's still not nearly enough testing in the U.S., where officially there's still only 2,800 known and reported cases.